Companion Extraordinaire

Challenge: Companion Extraordinaire is, at the core, a senior care services provider. The vast range of the customizable service offerings would take time to describe accurately and concisely. The writing and the look and feel would need to appeal to both the client themselves as well as the client's children or loved one. It is most often the case that the oldest adult daughter is the one researching and securing care for a parent. Companion Extraordinaire is also an educational training center for healthcare certification offering both online and onsite classes. The website will need to appeal to caregivers looking to advance their training, describe each class offering and keep and updated class calendar. The website will need to appeal to those interested in embarking on a new career and navigating training and services options. Companion Extraordinaire employs very close to 100 percent of their students. The site will also need to serve as a recruiting tool for those looking for employment and list job opportunities at the three locations. Beyond these outfacing offerings, the client wanted an employee portal. An organized place for employees to retrieve forms, and other essentials. The client also wanted WelchCreative to design an incentive rewards program for employees to make the Employee Portal a fun area to visit. Companion Extraordinaire also requested an Educational Portal for employees that might free up staff where employees could get class info and sign up on their own. The biggest challenge was that the management team is very busy with unpredictable schedules. We needed to put into place a way to get questions answered in order to keep design and production comments flowing between the different managers and WelchCreative. Wanted to make interaction with the site more fun. Wanted a reason for people to return.

Solution: To make the range of services a friendly read, Welch Creative categorized the offerings, created an icon, an image and a descriptive paragraph for each category of service. We then developed a tabbed system for the services page of the website making it easy to browse for those who are shopping and making it easier to navigate for those visitors who know what they want and prefer to directly target and access the information they are looking for. Each service category has a unique contact form, pre-collecting information and submitting the inquiry to the correct manager.

To speak to the various audiences we dedicated the homepage to the main audience... those looking for senior care. We crafted the language toward the most common researcher... the oldest daughter of an elder. We made sure to include overview videos and heartfelt testimonials from happy clients.

To speak to those looking for classes and training we have designated a "Classes" button at top and plenty of targeted banners that speak to students and caregivers looking for certification. To speak to those looking for employment we have a separate "Career" button as well as banners carefully placed for job seekers.

To help current employees, WelchCreative designed a secure Employee Portal where employee will find necessary forms and resources including newsletters and scholarship programs that pay for certification and training. Welch Creative also developed a fun shopping area where employees can use "points" gained on the online training program to buy fun merchandise, gift cards and paid time off.

Welch Creative also set up an Educational Portal for employees who are also students. Employees can now browse, sign up, pay for their courses and track their progress.

Work flow and the busy management team with unpredictable schedules. After many attempts at finding the available time to meet Welch Creative found that the staff has Friday afternoons off and requested weekly meeting on Friday at 2pm

Website added Resource central that stores blogs that are refreshed regularly and relevant articles in the industry that are updated monthly

Results: Once the regular meetings were established we were able to dig in and move mountains. We never met for more than 45 minutes. We never tried to discuss too many topics. WelchCreative organized a couple priorities to tackle each week. As each page was designed it was emailed to the team. We were able to review designs together, collect comments, reach a group consensus, get questions answered quickly and move the site forward.

The website has put online a ton of information that a front desk staff was previously bogged down to discuss with each client or student inquiry.

The automated appointment scheduling, class sign ups, has also lightened the load for inhouse staff.

The 4 unique contact forms front loads information intake and gets the inquiry to the right person.

The shopping area makes the employee section a fun and rewarding place to visit.

Resource central has become a popular place to visit for clients and caregivers alike with up to the moment information on nutrition, dementia, exercise, diabetes...

Companion Extraordinaire has increased their services, they have opened a fourth location in January 2023. Their onsite classes fill up quickly and typically sell out since the website has streamlined online offering to students.

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